America desperately needs more air traffic controllers • Hacker News Board

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#191

Post by stevage » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:12 PM UTC

jasondigitized wrote: post #184

legitster wrote: post #77

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The trainin…

I might get absolutely destroyed for this but here goes. We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere. Is it that much of a stretch to use similar technology and things like text to speech to help air traffic controllers do a better job? Genuinely curious about the technology advances in this space and if I am completely naive about the…

Fortnite is a closed system, everything controlled by one company. ATC is not.

But yes, presumably there is scope for improved tools.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#192

Post by ch4s3 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:13 PM UTC

XCabbage wrote: post #164

legitster wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Mr Brigida tried again to become an air traffic controller under the new tests, he said he failed the biographical questionnaire because he “didn’t fit the preferred ethnic profile”. This dude leading the lawsuit is incredibly unreliable. The ATC biographical assessment didn't have any race-based questions - it was just a decision making questionnaire: https://123atc.com/biographical-assessment It was a questi…

Indeed, it didn't have race-based questions, which I don't think anyone claimed. Rather it had totally arbitrary questions, not related to merit in any plausible way, and a score cutoff that made it highly likely you'd fail if you hadn't been tipped off with the correct answers. For instance, there is a 15-point question for which you have to answer that your worst grade in high school was in Science, and a separate…

I don't understand how this isn't a giant public scandal. Is there something I'm missing here?

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#193

Post by mullingitover » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:16 PM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #147

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He pushed for and signed this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control... which was a substantial improvement for millions of people. It's worth pointing out that the one (and probably only) good thing I can think of that Reagan did would get him tossed out of today's republican party.

The idea back then was a one-time amnesty in exchange for a secure border, which didn't happen. That's why Republicans are unwilling to budge a second time.

The idea was actually that employers would start to bear some responsibility for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and thus creating an economic incentive for the migration.

That didn't really happen. You see plenty of roundups of illegal immigrants, many/most are employed. What you don't see ever are roundups of their employers.

If you want to actually see this problem solved immediately all you need to do is show a daily perp walk of the employers on the evening news for a few months.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#194

Post by slt2021 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:17 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #186

slt2021 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not true, it is better for the brand long-term to build good cars. but unionized workforce makes it economically unfeasible. GM makes crappy because, if they tried to make high quality cars, they would be priced like Cadillacs

We have an apples to apples comparison with Mexican-made vehicles, though, since both GM and Toyota build there. What's the excuse for the shoddy non-union Mexican GM vehicles?

Mexico is an assembly operation to arbitrage cheap low skill labor and preferential NAFTA-like agreements.

Vehicle designs, powertrains, critical components are all made by the HQ or its suppliers.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#195

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:18 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #77

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The trainin…

[deleted]

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#196

Post by giantrobot » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:19 PM UTC

jasondigitized wrote: post #184

legitster wrote: post #77

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The trainin…

I might get absolutely destroyed for this but here goes. We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere. Is it that much of a stretch to use similar technology and things like text to speech to help air traffic controllers do a better job? Genuinely curious about the technology advances in this space and if I am completely naive about the…

> I am completely naive about the challenges presented.

The problem isn't collision detection or predicting movement. They're not a bunch of particles on simple ballistic trajectories. They're powered objects traveling in a turbulent and difficult to predict medium. In emergency conditions they can turn from a powered vehicle to an unpowered one. They can need to land immediately when flight worthiness changes in flight. A situation on the ground can make landings unsafe or impossible and an aircraft needs to diverted disrupting traffic at another airport.

Automating ATC works until one or more exceptional conditions arises. Then it's completely unsuitable and everyone from pilots to ATC need to work against the happy path automation to keep people alive.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#197

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:21 PM UTC

jasondigitized wrote: post #184

legitster wrote: post #77

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The trainin…

I might get absolutely destroyed for this but here goes. We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere. Is it that much of a stretch to use similar technology and things like text to speech to help air traffic controllers do a better job? Genuinely curious about the technology advances in this space and if I am completely naive about the…

> We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere.

With Fortnite, Epic pushes one update and a week later virtually every gamer has the update for free. And when an update goes bad, or the game goes down, usually nobody dies.

With aviation? Lifecycles there are measured in decades, and the changes needed for new control systems in an existing aircraft can be so huge that the entire aircraft needs a new certification. Hell if you want and can acquire such a thing, you can fly aircraft that's over a century old. Many avionics systems still in use today fundamentally date back to shortly after WW2 - VOR/DME for example is 1950s technology.

For tower control systems, you'd need a system that's capable of dealing with very very old aircraft, military aircraft that doesn't even have transponders activated a lot of the time, aircraft that don't have transponders at all (e.g. ultralights), has well defined interfaces with other systems (regional/national/continental/oceanic control zones)...

Oh and someone has to pay for all of that.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#198

Post by legitster » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:21 PM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #192

XCabbage wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it didn't have race-based questions, which I don't think anyone claimed. Rather it had totally arbitrary questions, not related to merit in any plausible way, and a score cutoff that made it highly likely you'd fail if you hadn't been tipped off with the correct answers. For instance, there is a 15-point question for which you have to answer that your worst grade in high school was in Science, and a separate…

I don't understand how this isn't a giant public scandal. Is there something I'm missing here?

It was a public scandal, which is why Congress passed a law in 2016.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#199

Post by jaredwiener » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:24 PM UTC

AutistiCoder wrote: post #140

legitster wrote: post #77

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The trainin…

I've dreamed of having an AI model run ATC. Just train an AI on ATC recordings and other data, maybe throw in some reinforcement learning,and then test it in low-stakes commercial airspace (like a regional airport)

What is "low stakes"? This is quite literally life-or-death.

Also, just FYI -- airports don't hire their own ATC; it's all FAA (or the equivalent wherever you are located.)

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#200

Post by mikeyouse » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:26 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #146

legitster wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools I don't think any sane person would be against raising ATC wages. But to refer back to my post, the situation might be different if it there were not also a massive pilot shortage as well! If these two pools of talent mostly overlap raising wages on one will probably just pull from the other. It's probably a combination of raising wages an…

Because we are an aged society, with such an incredibly low birth rate, this will only get worse. There are only so many competent people in our society, and that talent pool is being spread thin across all sectors of society which require such candidates. There are looming doctor shortages, too. Professionals of all stripes.

The birth rate thing is a bit of a canard in this context. There are something like 100 million Americans under the age of 30.. we’ll have some demographic problems in a generation or two but there are plenty of people to staff the physician and ATC roles.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...